It happened. The calendar flipped from 2013 to 2014.
For me, and most other marketers I suspect, looking back at the driving trends and topics from the past year is as fun as it is essential for future planning.
During this ‘looking back’ exercise, I read through some pertinent content that we generated around our customer’s hot topics and industry trends. Some of the topics our blog contributors covered in 2013 – like the evolution of quality monitoring, ‘big data’, and how the entire organization can benefit from the information generated from contact center interactions – continue to be important industry themes. As such, we’ll strive to keep abreast of these subjects and bring you the latest ideas, innovations and leading practices in these areas as we move through 2014. At the end of this post are recaps of our 5 most popular blogs in 2013 – if you missed them, now’s your chance to catch the re-run.
As we get into the swing of things in 2014, I’ve been thinking about the business challenges companies have been telling us they’re going to tackle in the upcoming year. They’re by no means new, they’re the same key issues that we all know and “love” – improving sales effectiveness, improving customer retention, understanding and improving customer satisfaction and loyalty, reducing costs and managing compliance. But what is new, are some of the approaches they’re taking to get their arms around these issues. As big data techniques grow and predictive analytics continues to take shape, there’s so many interesting ways customer interaction analytics fits into this picture. I’m excited to have this forum to share successes we see in the marketplace, best practices for incorporating event information from interactions in order to drive more robust decisions and ideas for better integrating the contact center into the corporate DNA.
I’m also interested to hear what you think. What trends are you most looking forward to exploring in 2014? What do you think is going to have the biggest impact on the way contact centers bring value to the companies of which they are a part? What topics would you like to see featured more prominently on this blog? Please don’t be shy, drop us a comment below.
Top Content from 2013:
1: Kansas or Oz. The Difference Interaction Analytics Can Have on Performance Management
A former contact center supervisor offers a first-hand view of how his role would have been different if he has been using Interaction Analytics. It would have enabled him to stop relying on random phone calls when performing an agent evaluation, tie performance back to metrics important to corporate goals, and coach agents in a meaningful way. The contrast to his former way of life versus what’s possible today offers a unique perspective for any company looking to make a shift to its quality management program.
2: Interaction Analytics Findings: The Hidden Treasures in Your Attic
Companies are attracted to interaction analytics because they know they have a “treasure” of information hidden away in the interactions they’ve been capturing in their call center, but need a way to uncover the intelligence locked inside. It’s all too common for interaction analytics customers to develop business cases and generate findings, but then not translate those findings into action plans that in turn, yield a measurable return on investment. Before you embark on an interaction analytics journey, make sure you have a plan.
http://blog.nexidia.com/treasuresinyourattic/
3: What You Need to Know to Climb the Big Data Beanstalk
You can run, but you definitely can’t hide from the term “big data” these days. The phrase is almost like that beanstalk – you know the one that Jack climbed? It started from an innocuous bean and grew into something gargantuan overnight. In this post we’ll tease apart the types of data that combine to make it ‘big’ and discuss how analyzing both can help companies fill in the gaps in the customer journey. By better understanding the journey, comes a level of understanding that allows marketing plans to be tailored, customer satisfaction programs to be developed, sales offers to be targeted and overall business operations to improve.
http://blog.nexidia.com/bigdatabeanstalk/
4: Real-time versus Post-call Analytics. Which is the Chicken and Which is the Egg?
Real-time monitoring and alerting is a hot topic in the contact center space right now. As part of an interaction analytics solution, it brings tremendous value by scanning for key events that trigger actions to impact calls as they’re actually happening. For example, agents can be provided with better ways to service a customer based on that customer’s particular needs on that particular call, or calls can be monitored for compliance infractions so they can be corrected before the call is completed and a potential fine is incurred. However, to maximize the value of a real-time application, post-call analytics must first be applied to know what events are most relevant to scan for, and what actions those events should trigger to drive changes that yield the greatest returns. Instead of asking yourself which to implement first, or if one should be chosen over the other, you should ask yourself how to set up your interaction analytics system so that real-time monitoring and post-call analytics are working in tandem with one another to drive maximum return on investment.
http://blog.nexidia.com/realtimevspostcall/
5: Making the Contact Center Your Company’s Most Strategic Asset
Thanks to the development of interaction analytics, contact centers, which may have been viewed as merely cost generators in the past, are rightfully taking their place as a strategic asset to the company. By processing 100 percent of agent/customer interactions and analyzing the unstructured data contained in those interactions, companies are better positioned to use the information to track the reasons why customers make contact and the behaviors and events that happen during that contact. This analysis improves nearly every department in the company touched by a customer. Customer experience is enhanced, creating lower churn and a healthy company bottom line.
http://blog.nexidia.com/making-the-contact-center-your-companys-most-strategic-asset/
Laura Solari is a marketing professional with over 13 years of experience that spans across a wide-range of industries. She has project management experience in both B2B and B2C environments and has successfully worked on both the agency and client side. She has spent the last 6 years in the Interaction Analytics industry, responsible for all facets of marketing and communications for companies including Nexidia. She is a graduate of the University of Georgia where she was an Interdisciplinary Studies major. When not working she enjoys volunteering with animal rescue organizations, drawing and painting or watching college football.
